I have shared alot of footage of my Mason Bees, a kind of Solitary Bee. Mostly its pictures and video from my webcam. Which is nice to see the whole of their homes, but not so much up close. During the few months while these Bees were out and from February through April I brought my tripod outside along with my Lumix GH3 camera, I put my Olympus MSC ED M. 60mm Macro lens on it and just let it record them working hard at their homes.
In this series I will be using a Shure VP83 LensHopper external microphone to capture the sounds of the Bees. A high pitched buzzing can be heard occasionally coming from inside the homes when the Bees are shaking off the pollen they collected. And the video is recorded at 60 FPS for smooth footage of the Bees flying and moving around. Using LBRY as my video platform, the video I rendered is what you get in playback, so there should be little to no loss when viewing.
Two kinds of Mason Bees can be seen entering and leaving the homes. The most easy way to tell which is which is their butts. One has a plain black abdomen (Osmia cornuta) also known as a European Orchard Bee. And the other has a yellow fuzzy abdomen (Osmia leaiana) also known as a Orange-vented Mason Bee.
They do not seem to mind each other and both work very hard. We have other Bees that visit the property as well but they do not use the homes I made for them.
In part 1, we look into the bee house I built them for the previous year. I filled it to the roof with bee boards I made using a router. The Bees will fill the holes I made with mud, pollen and larva to continue the cycle of life for next spring.
Coming up in part 2, we will see more activity of the Mason Bees in the bee house. And I change the angle to get a different perspective.
If you have any questions about these Bees please let a comment and ill get back with you. Otherwise I hope you enjoy seeing them up close and working hard on building their homes.
LBRY Video Link